Type of business Social network Available in Italian English Founder(s) Quentral s.r.l. | Type of site Beta Owner Quentral s.r.l. Slogan(s) The interest network | |
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Quag is an interest-based social network created in Italy.
Contents
On Quag, the interaction between users is generated based on the concept not of “friendship”, but of “common interest” or “affinity”.
On Quag, the word “interest” covers as wide a range as possible: an interest can be a passion, a need, a problem, an area of study…on Quag we can discuss what really interests us with people who have something in common with us, who share our interests, passions, needs or problems.
Features
Quag is a social network equipped with a proprietary technology, the interest graph, which is able to recognise the interests of users based on their behaviour, and to create significant connections between them.
The Quag interest graph is semantic, and is thus not subject to the fragmentation of tag-based systems, or those based on folksonomy or pre-defined categories. It automatically connects people with common interests, by using three levels of connection: synonyms, related concepts and hypernyms (semantic relations linking two or more words), so Quag’s proprietary technology allows it to correlate terms such as “clothing” and “shirt”, or "futurism" and "literature". The algorithm Quag is based on also functions through connections… similar meaning areas are grouped together by means of a semantic system of synonymous or correlated concepts.
The Quag interest graph is also able to understand what users are interested in, but also the extent of their interest in a topic, and whether their contributions on Quag to the topic indicate they are experts on it or would simply like to learn more about it.
Quag uses an interaction model that is different from the traditional Questions & Answers (Q&A), with the aim of offering greater scope for interconnecting people and thus allowing them to develop complex discussions, also by using multimedia elements such as images, videos and links to web pages.
Quag was created in Italian, but it is structured in such a way as to be fully functional also in other languages.
Evaluation
All topics developed on Quag, as well as discussions and answers to the specific questions asked by users, are evaluated by users themselves by means of a system whereby contributions are voted up or down depending on how useful they are considered to be.
Quag brings together people with the same passions. Users’ answers are evaluated by other members by voting up those considered "useful".
This allows the community taking part to indicate those users who receive most upvotes as the most competent with regard to a particular topic. The opportunity to build a reputation in a particular area is a way to attract experts in the sector seeking visibility as a result of their skills or knowledge.
Privacy
In order to safeguard privacy, in discussions regarding delicate subjects such as health, it is possible to make contributions anonymously. Quag protects all information people are not willing to share spontaneously.